Welcome back to a series that aims to get you acquainted with all things TERA. In our last entry, we covered the melee classes available in the game. Today, we are going to introduce the rest of the crew: 1 ranged class, 1 caster class and 2 support professions.

Archers represent the ranged melee class in this game. Being skilled in both medium and short ranged attacks, combined with the ability to manipulate traps, makes them a challenging opponent, similar to Warriors in their ability to stay flexible and change their tactics when necessary.

In PvP, Archers can afford to stay back concentrate on harassing healers and helping bring down focused enemy targets. Should the opponents get too close for comfort, you have a couple of tools to slow them down and buy you the chance to get escape. Traps remain invisible for enemies, usually produce AoE damage and a have various status alignments associated with them.

The ranged caster class is represented by the Sorcerer, who is the primary magic damage dealing class in TERA. Just like in other games, Sorcerers rely on keeping their distance from enemies while unleashing a ton of damage when the opportunity arises. Control wise, if you’ve played a similar class before, things will feel familiar but also slightly more intense, as you will have to exercise precision when timing and aiming your attacks.

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You can’t really argue that Perfect World Entertainment has quite a share of the free-to-play MMO-market in the West. The company’s stable of titles includes the likes of the ever popular Perfect World, Jade Dynasty, Battle of the Immortals and even the upcoming online version of Torchlight. Pretty much all titles are quite rich in the content offered, but over time, players have noticed that most of the games tend to look and play very similar, despite some major differences.

Forsaken World is PWE’s biggest title to date, with the project being the most costly undertaking in terms of finance and time. The game certainly has some genre staples, but also teases us with some of its more unique features. Does Forsaken World do justice to the company’s effort or is it yet another all too familiar endeavor? You’ve seen all our coverage to date — now read on for the bottom line.

When starting your character, we are offered a choice of five races – Humans, Elves, Kindred, Stonemen and Dwarves. The choice to restrict class choices for different races seems like an odd one. Currently, players who like Dwarves can only be Marksmen, and Stonemen can only be Protectors. Maybe it’s just me, but I like freedom and having the option to play the game my way, rather than developers telling me how to do it.

Visually, Forsaken World is a bit of a mixed bag. At times, the game looks truly impressive with some cool spell effects and imaginative environments, and the new engine can display some nice landscapes and scenes. This, however, makes some of the graphical weaknesses stand out even more. Characters look like they were a product of an inferior engine, and the game could use some variation in the animations of starter skills. At least character customization is decent (for a free-to-play title), and pretty soon I found the look my new Elven Bard would go for. You should note that you can wear two types of equipment in Forsaken World – one for stats and one for fashion. The best thing about this system is that you get the choice what set will appear on your character and what will be counted towards your stats. Continue Reading

Glowing swords mean epic.

Before that headline gets me in trouble I’d like to qualify it. No, come back up here. Stay away from the comments section until I’ve had my say, please.

This article is not claiming that Forsaken World is better than WoW, or even vice versa. Or throwing fresh fuel on the always charring embers of F2P vs. subscription business model holy war. This article is simply stating intriguing features that Perfect World Entertainment has implemented in its upcoming F2P MMORPG (which “releases” tomorrow, March 9, 2011). All but the last two have been personally experienced. Some are innovative, some are no-brainers and some are quality-of-life additions. All deserve to be heralded.

• Inventory management – Sick of having your quest items mixed in with normal items? Or vendor trash displacing your carefully organized gear sets? PWE devised the clever notion to give players the ability to sort or search their inventory out of the box. No addons required.
• Search for an NPC – The map in Forsaken World is busy, hitting players with an overwhelming amount of information. To clear out the riff-raff, simply search for any NPC. I’d like the feature to be restricted to “discovered” NPCs – either personally, or being told their whereabouts – but I’ll settle for the capability given.
• New Player Experience – Ronix wrote a fantastic post on the opening experience. Read it. It should cause a lot more than 30% of players to progress past level 10.
• Encyclopedia/Achievement System – You’ve spent hours, neigh, days, weeks, perhaps even months in an MMORPG. Don’t you want to know exactly what you’ve accomplished?  Forsaken World will allow players to revisit their adventures by reading through a personal encyclopedia. The avatar history was pretty wonky in Closed Beta – entries not loading – but the idea is a good implementation of WAR’s best feature, and beats the hell out of a collection of meaningless points, but it has those too. Continue Reading

Earlier this week, iTZKooPA mentioned the ‘carrot-on-a-stick’ approach regularly emphasized in Forsaken World. Today, I’d like to delve deeper into this aspect of Perfect World Entertainment’s upcoming title and show you that these systems go deeper than you could have imagined.

Right from the get-go, the game offers a mixture of comfort and gentle encouragement in order to ease players into the initial experience. Upon your log-in, you receive a few shinies to keep you excited and give you that warm fuzzy feeling of being welcome in this new world. They include things like health and mana potions that have infinite use but expire after a week, bag extensions, identification scrolls, and various buffs. The mysterious box that sits in your inventory is not simply a gift dispenser, but also a tool for players to get acquainted with various game mechanics. Along with identification scrolls and food that temporarily increases your stats, it frequently gives out introductions to game features relevant to your current level.

The constant stream of presents is timed at certain intervals to avoid an overdose, but also to keep you wanting more. The reward mechanic is nothing new, but Forsaken World does it better than competitors by making these presents actually useful to your gaming experience. Moreover, they also serve the purpose of introducing and getting you accustomed to the idea of having a vast amount of convenience items at your disposal from the beginning. That way, once you go past the new player experience and get into the meat of the game, the idea of having (buying) various shinies will not seem like an unusual one. This doesn’t mean that higher level players don’t get rewards though, quite the opposite.

Every player has the option to pray when the in-game constellation changes (part of the Zodiac System mentioned earlier). The first four prayers have a chance to give you additional experience and items. There is also a journal that neatly organizes your progression in each game zone and frequently awards achievement points that you can get through exploration and questing. In addition, being a member of a guild will net you a daily reward in the form of experience scrolls and several types of in-game currency.

This sort of encouragement goes beyond mere rewards and can be seen in the fabric of Forsaken World itself. Each significant layer of activity and content in the game has some sort of a meaningful system attached to it in order to encourage and lead players on. Examples of these systems are everywhere. Certain interval levels are accompanied by a pop-up box that aims to introduce players to additional content that has become available. It’s not just a simple Help menu though, as it teaches you about the quests available for your level range, what monsters to kill, what jobs you can learn, as well as where to farm money and equipment. It also allows you to set reminders and see what events are currently on. In addition to all of this, you get a hefty Encyclopedia that is reachable from the main menu once you acquire it. It acts as an in-game wiki of sorts and allows you to search through its contents using keywords.

Everything in the game is designed to make the process of chasing that carrot as unobtrusive as possible. Systems like a quest tracker that allows your character to travel to key locations on auto-pilot, as well as a detailed map of the surroundings, allow you to easily navigate around the world with a couple of clicks and make sure that the time spent in Forsaken World flows quickly and without you even noticing.

When it comes down to it, there are basically two types of MMO-players. Those who view their time spent in-game simply as a source of entertainment and a fun experience, and those who are drawn to the promise of a living world that they can influence and be a part of. Forsaken World is a prime example of the former, and a well-crafted one at that. By not being afraid to admit its themepark roots, the game manages to improve the old formula and have multiple hook points that will leave players coming back for more.

World of Warcraft is often compared to crack, a substance that gets you addicted almost immediately upon consumption and has severe withdrawal issues. Forsaken World, on the other hand, is more akin to refined heroin, something that gets you attached to it over a period of time, without you even noticing. Wait, this isn’t a blog about drugs? Son of a…